The Torreón
Continuing the theme of the Wild West after releasing Betrayal, the poem The Torreón appeared in Issue 11 of Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, a vibrant online publication which has showcased a number of my poems. The poem appears on pages 48 and 49.
The subject of the poem The Torreón is one near and dear to my heart, which is the Lincoln County War and specifically the character who precipitated it. His name is John Henry Tunstall, I am not about to dive into the historical overview – that has been amply covered by many historians, some of whom are giants in their field. Authors like Frederick Nolan, James B. Mills, Gale Cooper, to name but a few, have enriched our understanding of the turbulent Wild West with their mighty legacies.
The Book which inspired the Poem
But in the maze of information that is out there, I go where my heart leads.
My attention focused on a description given by the gifted writer Elisabeth Fackler in her novel The Legend of El Chivato.
It is Christmas Eve and the young Tunstall has an intimation of the weight of history. He senses mysterious forces at work as he stands in the shadow of an old ruin known as The Torreón. He is on his way to dinner at the McSweens on a chilly night. Her description of the scene inspired my poem. The gravitas and tragic beauty of her writing ignited the Muse.
Her novel was one of the very first books I bought about the life of William Bonney, perhaps in naiveté. But something drew me to her work, a hunch perhaps. I am a poet, not a historian. I felt the weight of truth behind her writing, especially the characters she brought to life. Her understanding of the events which shaped the Lincoln County War is cogent, brilliantly portraying the strengths and weaknesses and the strategies of the participants. The Torreón became central to the stage on which the conflict ensued.
The Introduction on Goodreads
The introduction on Goodreads neatly summarises her book:
“When young Englishman John Tunstall arrived in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory in 1876, he felt he had found the true frontier at last. Here was the toughest little spot in America, and he jumped eagerly into the game of getting rich. Lawyer McSween coated his own ambition with pious motives, but his worldly wife predicted disaster. Their marriage, and McSween’s alliance with Tunstall against the local kingpin of the corrupt Santa Fé Ring, set the fuse for the bloody Lincoln County War. In the explosion of violence that followed, Billy Bonney slowly rose from obscurity to become ‘the’ Kid of American legend. This is how it happened.”
John Tunstall
Tunstall was the one man who had offered Billy the Kid a future. Fackler pens their burgeoning collaboration with evident sensitivity and insight, describing the impression the young Bonney made upon him, By equipping him with the means to start his own ranch, the Kid’s life might have evolved very differently had Tunstall lived. Instead, Tunstall was brutally murdered by the henchmen of the corrupt Santa Fé Ring because he dared to establish his own rival mercantile business. The rest, they say, is history.
Billy Bonney vowed revenge on Tunstall’s murderers. The memory of John Tunstall deserves a poem. I poured my heart into the work, an offering to his memory.
The Serendipity
By some magical fortune I had found an unexpected treasure within the pages of a sought-after secondhand book, The Real Billy the Kid. The author, Miguel Otero, was one of the pallbearers at Billy Bonney’s funeral. Neatly kept in an envelope were authentic photographs of the Torreón. They were a perfect accompaniment to my literary offering! I sent copies of them to the editor of Suburban Witchcraft, which she published with the poem.